Reply from Congressman Emanuel Cleaver concerning OrphanWorksActof 2008

[rod]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Jon Pruente <jdpruente at gmail.com> wrote:
> The latest taxes stats that I've seen (for 2006) showed that the top
> 1% of tax payers paid almost half the taxes paid.  That's nearly
> double the amount paid when taxes were higher under Carter.  People
> like to hate the Bush tax cuts, but they are working.  The proof is in
> the pudding.  The top 51% of tax payers?  They pay 97.something% of
> all taxes paid.

I think you should have qualified the taxes paid.  You might have
meant 97% of Income Taxes paid not all taxes paid.

The IRA's site shows:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html

Tax Stats at a Glance

Summary of Collections Before Refunds by Type of Return, FY 2007 [1]

Type of Return     Number of Returns                      Gross Collections

       Millions of $)

Individual income tax [1]     138,893,908                      1,366,241
Corporation income tax [1]      2,507,728 [2]                     395,536
Employment taxes [1]           30,740,592                          849,733 [3]
Excise taxes [1]                        907,165
    53,050
Gift tax [1]                                 252,522
           2,420
Estate tax [1]                              49,924
       24,558


This works out to Empoyment taxes (FICA and some others see the
footnote)  being 31.5% of the total. Even if one assumes that the
upper 51% pay 100% of all the other taxes that still leave the upper
51% needing to pay about 90% of the Employment taxes to get to 97% of
all taxes. Given the flat nature of this tax (~12%) for moneys earned
under about  $91k and the elimination of the tax on moneys over this
mark,  I think "income" is the qualifier that should have been used in
your statement.

This data is form FY 2007, but I can't think of any big tax changes
from '06 to '07 that would make this inaccurate. You said your data
was from 2006.  What was the source?  It may have contained a
qualifier as to the type of tax.  Maybe it contain state and locale
tax data?

Rod